The phonographs of hades in the brain Are tunnels that
re-wind themselves, and love A burnt match
skating in a urinal.
1930 The Bridge,'The Tunnel'. |
The Cross alone has flown the wave. But since the Cross sank, much that's warped and cracked Has followed in its name, has heaped its grave.
(Harold) Hart CraneThe bottom of the sea is cruel.
(Harold) Hart CraneBequeath us no earthly shore until Is answered in the vortex of our grave The seal's wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.
(Harold) Hart CraneLight wrestling there incessantly with light, Star kissing star through wave on wave unto Your body rocking!
(Harold) Hart CraneSlow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved And changed.
(Harold) Hart CraneO Sleepless as the river under thee, Vaulting the sea, the prairies'dreaming sod, Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
(Harold) Hart CraneYou who desired so muchin vain to ask Yet fed your hunger like an endless task, Dared dignify the labor, bless the quest Achieved that stillness ultimately best, Being, of all, least sought for: Emily, hear!
(Harold) Hart CraneThe last bear, shot drinking in the Dakotas Loped under wires that span the mountain stream. Keen instruments, strung to a vast precision Bind town to town and dream to ticking dream.
(Harold) Hart CraneHobo-trekkers that forever search An empire wilderness of freight and rails.
(Harold) Hart CraneDead echoes! But I knew her body there, Time like a serpent down her shoulder, dark, And space, an eaglet's wing, laid on her hair.
(Harold) Hart CraneFew evade full measure of their fate.
(Harold) Hart CraneThin squeaks of radio static, The captured fume of space foams in our ears.
(Harold) Hart CraneOur Meistersinger, thou set breath in steel; And it was thou who on the boldest heel Stood up and flung the span on even wing Of that great Bridge, our Myth, whereof I sing.
(Harold) Hart CraneOur tongues recant like beaten weather vanes.
(Harold) Hart CraneThe bell-rope that gathers God at dawn Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell Of a spent day.
(Harold) Hart CraneStars scribble on our eyes the frosty sagas, The gleaming cantos of unvanquished space.
(Harold) Hart CraneCowslip and shad-blow, flaked like tethered foam Around bared teeth of stallions, bloomed that spring When first I read thy lines, rife as the loam Of prairies, yet like breakers cliffward leaping!
(Harold) Hart Crane